She heard the distant thump of the cannon, and watched the hawk drop. She saw its talons extend, and the spurt of blood and feathers as it struck.
As the hawk sailed to the ground, clutching its prey, Elif saw the imperial caique approaching from the Golden Horn. Under its fluttering canopy sat the new ruler of the empire, Abdulmecid, sixteen years old, fresh from his investiture at Eyup, at the tomb of the Companion of the Prophet.
She turned from the window.
“Abdulmecid has been girded with the sword of Osman,” she said. She ran her hand across her stomach. “It’s time we joined him, don’t you think?”
3
Abdulmecid’s girls ran as a herd, sweeping past a black eunuch on the steps, across the polished marble floors, streaming up the wide shallow staircase to the harem.
At the top of the stairs, the girls paused.
The wailing and keening for the departed sultan had given way to tantrums and the gnashing of teeth. Doors flew open, and slammed. Women dashed in all directions. Children were running aimlessly from room to room. The black eunuchs stood about wringing their hands. Matrons bawled, while slender Circassians squealed, their blond ringlets all askew; somebody was dragging at the curtains in a little room. Bags and boxes were piled pell-mell in the hallways. A girl sat on a box, crying into a broken mirror.
Abdulmecid’s girls paused, pretending astonishment: eyebrows arched, fingers to horrified lips.
“It’s disgusting,” Elif said.
“Suyutsuz,” Melda corrected her: undignified.
Elif nodded. Undignified was better. It was a proper harem word. The harem had a language that was all its own: words and phrases that you had to learn unless you wanted to look like a novice. It went with a way of speaking that was softer and more sibilant than the street language of the ordinary Turks, grander, more easygoing. That harem lisp was like having soft hands: it showed your rank. The voice of a harem girl was like a caress.
But not today.
Elif stuck with Melda, who seemed to know where she was going.
4
The lady Talfa stepped out of the room, hand across her mouth, the sound of cannon and the screaming in her ears.
She saw women sweep down the corridor, hammering at the doors, dragging at each other’s clothes, and baring their teeth, like wolves.
A vase wobbled on its stand, between two windows. As the lady Talfa watched, a skirt brushed against the stand. A woman flung back her hand and caught the rim of the vase as it circled. It swung wide and went over with a smack, shivering to pieces on the wooden floor.
Slippered feet trampled over the fragments.
Two girls ran past, hand in hand, laughing. The lady Talfa saw the color in their cheeks, the sparkle in their eyes.
She stepped forward.
“Who are you? Where do you think you’re going?” she hissed.
Elif’s head whipped around. She saw a woman in the doorway. “It’s our turn now, auntie,” Elif spat. She laughed at the shock on the older woman’s face and her pretty blue eyes narrowed. The woman was jowly and pallid and she had lost her waist.
Elif cupped her hands beneath her breasts. “We’re the pretty girls.”
She saw the look of hesitation on Talfa’s face, and her glance shifted over Talfa’s shoulder. “What’s this room, Melda? What’s in here?” she said, tugging at her friend’s hand.
But the other girl drew back impatiently. “I know where to go, Elif. Don’t waste time.”
Elif shrugged. “All right, you lead.” As she sped off she half turned her head: “Better get packing, auntie!”
Talfa blinked. She had seen the carriages drawn up in the courtyard, and the women stuffing the sultan’s treasures into little bags. It was all they had, whatever they could carry off.
But they could have been allowed to leave the harem in peace, with dignity.
It was a serious blunder for which Ibou, the chief black eunuch, should be made to pay.
The lady Talfa gripped the door frame as another burst of wild laughter rang down the corridor, followed by an anguished scream.
5
Elif and Melda reached the stairs at the end of the corridor and scampered up them, giggling and breathless.
At the top they had a corridor to themselves. They chose a door and burst into a room that overlooked the Bosphorus.
A woman was shoveling the contents of a small table into a bag.
They all stared at one another. Then the woman screamed and Melda sprang at the woman and slapped her on the cheek.
“Stop that! Stop it! What are you doing with that bag?”
The woman tightened her grip on the bag. “This is mine! Get out!”
Melda made a grab for the bag. The woman yanked it back and the table went over.
“Now look!”
Elif snatched at the woman’s scarf. Melda kept her eyes on the bag. “What’s in there? What are you stealing?”
They heard running footsteps in the corridor and one of their girls put her head around the door, then withdrew it again.
The woman with the bag seemed to have trouble breathing. Her eyes bulged and her face went red. Elif gave the scarf a last savage tug and Melda went for the bag. The woman staggered and let it go. “It’s mine,” she choked.
“Drop it, auntie. If it was yours you’d have packed it by now. Go on, get out!”
They shoved the woman into the corridor. She was wringing her hands, but there were two of them and there wasn’t much she could do. Melda and Elif put their backs to the door and watched the handle rattle.
After a while they heard more people running in the corridor. The handle went still.
The two girls turned to each other and burst out laughing.
Later they looked into the bag. It was pathetic what those women tried to carry off-right down to their kohl, and half-used bottles of rosewater, and little paper talismans. The woman they’d surprised had obviously thought she could get away with the coffeepot! Even if she’d been the coffee kalfa, it didn’t belong to her. The rest of the stuff in the bag was almost certainly stolen, too. All that money-and she wasn’t even pretty.
Elif shrugged. Those women were old and their sultan was dead. She thought of the woman they’d frightened on the floor below. Perhaps they should have seized her room.
It is our turn now, she thought, as she examined the scarf. It wasn’t even torn.
But Elif had made a serious mistake.
The woman on the floor below was the lady Talfa. She was neither particularly young nor particularly pretty.
